Small groups of former crew lounge on several of the wrecks, lodging in dim, disused cabins, keeping watch for anyone seeking to strip the ships of valuable scrap.

One crew member, who asked not to be identified, said he and three others had worked shifts to stay in the cabin all day and night for 15 months since the ship capsized.

Copper and bronze and the brass from the ship's propeller could be sold for as much as 20,000,000 naira ($55,000), he said.

"People will come and steal valuables that are still here," he added.

- Policing the waters -

The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, which polices the country's waterways, says it is proactive in removing the likely hundreds of wrecks but concede that removing them is expensive.

Taibat Lawanson, a professor of urban planning at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), said the price of removal was prohibitive.

"Because removing them is so costly, neither the state government nor the federal government takes enough responsibility for their removal," he said.

Small groups of naval officials, some with uniformed t-shirts, others topless in the sun, bask on the upper decks of confiscated ships.

Tunji Adejumo, a landscape architect and ecologist at UNILAG, says the navy has become the main monitoring agency on the coastline.

"Yet even still, many of these shipping companies are able to avoid culpability for leaving their wrecks in the water," he said.

"These shipwrecks hurt the aesthetics of the coastline. They degrade over time, dumped there but rarely dealt with. And they have serious environmental effects."

- Night-time curfew -

In Lighthouse Beach, a mostly quiet get-away lined by large beach houses, a wreck at the very end of the shore has been a landmark for visitors for years.